Dominator Ukulele Tabs

Well folks, the 2010 Tahoe Uke Fest is in the books. The good people at PlayUke.net did a fantastic job putting on such a great event. The Nugget venue was perfect for the event and will only get better in future years to come.

I’m going to try to keep this short and just summarize some highlights. Upon our arrival I snuck into Matt Dahlberg’s strumming workshop and was joined shortly after by the one and only Aldrine Guerrero from Ukulele Underground. At the end of the day we ended up back in Matt’s room for a little jamming and brainstorming about what songs we might play for the All-star concert on Saturday night. Since Jake was not able to be there a variety of musicians were assembled to perform on the Celebrity Showroom stage on Saturday night.

Saturday afternoon I took the stage for my set and invited Ali Lexa to join me on the great George Benson tune, Breezin. After that I summoned Matt Dahlberg to the stage to play one of my original tunes, Rise and Shine, and a duet on George Harrison’s "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". After communicating with Matt for a number of years over the Internet it was a pleasure to finally meet him in person and play together for the first time. I look forward to the opportunity to share the stage with him again soon.

The Saturday night concert was incredible. Ukulele Bartt opened the show with a couple of tunes and then called Matt and I to join him on a Flamenco inspired version of Del Shannon’s “Runaway”. It was so much fun to play with Bartt and John Gold and Matt worked the crowd into a frenzy with his 10 finger strumming technique that he mastered after purchasing Jake’s Play Loud Ukulele DVD.

Next, Michael Powers took the stage and blew everybody away with his technique and unique approach to the ukulele which he labels as “Urban Ukulele”. Next up was the fabulous Brittni Paiva who mesmerized us with her beautiful versions of “Europa” and “Somewhere over the Rainbow”. Brittni was followed by an incredibly energizing performance by Aldrine Guerrero. Aldrine played flawless versions of “Something”, “Imagine” and Schizophrenic Snowflakes, to name a few, and then called Brittni, Michael Powers and James Hill to join him for an awe-inspiring rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s “Little Wing”. This was capped off with a performance by James Hill who then called all of us to the stage to play a version of Mick Jagger’s “Miss You” in honor of Jake.

This wonderful night came to a conclusion as we met in Aldrine’s suite for lots of food and laughter. Below are some videos and pictures from the weekend. I’m already looking forward to next year. See you there.

Tis the season once again. The holidays are upon us and before you know it Christmas will be hear and gone. Last season Aldrine Guerrero released a downloadable EP titled “Four Strings of Christmas” consisting of 6 tracks.

1. Sleigh Ride
2. Winter Wonderland
3. The Christmas Song
4. Up on the Housetop
5. Carol of the Bells
6. Schizophrenic Snowflakes

I had intended to transcribe "The Christmas Song" and post a tab but never got around to it. I got an earlier start on it this year but ran into some challenges while entering it into the Powertab editor. I was afraid it would take too long to get the tab completed so I opted for putting together a quick tutorial. Turns out it wasn’t as quick as I had hoped for and extended into a second video. I will continue to work the tab but for now here are Parts 1 and 2 for Aldrine Guerrero’s arrangement of “The Christmas Song”.

The EP is available for download for a mere $6 US at the following LINK:

In the tutorial I don't actually play the song all the way through so I will be uploading a video of me playing it start to finish probably later today. That should help tie it all together.

I hope you enjoy the videos and are able to play this one for friends and family during the upcoming holidays. Merry Christmas to all.

EDIT: 11/29/09
And here is a video I recorded of the song start to finish to help tie the tutorials all together.

Though we had more than our share of rain this year the trip to Kauai` was wonderful. We got to spend some time with Aldrine Guerrero and the rest of the gang from Ukulele Underground as well as our good friend Kirby Keough. Here's a few pics from our music adventures.

Guess who the one is that doesn't live in the tropical sunshine?
The UU gang, Aldrine, Aaron and Ryan

Dinner with our good friend Kirby Keough at Keoki's Paradise

We did manage one nice sunset. This is the view directly accross the road from our place

Dom & Kirby laying down a few tunes at Joe's on the Green

Domintor jamming with Kahalau Leoiki and Keala Kauanui at the Lihue Airport on the way out of town

Here are a couple of videos from the trip.

Last weekend was a great time filled with lots of music, food, drink and loads of laughter as Aldrine Guerrero was in the bay area to kick off his CA Mini Tour.

Things didn’t start off so good though as the traffic from Sacramento to Berkeley was backed up big time. Normally it takes us about an hour and a half to get to Mike DaSilva’s shop but this day it took us over 3 hours. I missed Deach and Russbuss’ entire set as we strolled down the hallway hearing the audience applause for their last song. I didn’t even get to set my instruments down as I was directed immediately to the stage. My hands were sticky and clammy from the drive so I had Aldrine plug in my uke while I washed up a bit and then it was time to let the music begin. The crowd was great and very receptive which made things a littler easier. Below are a few pics from the night and some video taken by GrumpyCoyoteTunes of Ukulele Underground.

It was awesome to finally meet some members of UU that also have a collaborative YouTube channel known as Uke Crazy Bitches (UCB ). Among those I had never met before were AddelleTheGreat, GrumpyCoyoteTunes and Boozelele


Dom & Russ

Dom & Aldrine

Dom with Addelle and Boozelele

Dom & GrumpyCoyoteTunes

Dom & Deach

Dom & Russbuss415

Dom & Aldrine

On Saturday we headed down to Elk Grove for the Hawaiian Style Grill Summer Kickoff party. It was a great day filled with music, hula dancing and great food. Here are a few pics from the day. There were a number of groups that performed and then I had the pleasure of sharing the stage, for a couple of numbers, with Brad (aka Hippie Guy) who runs the website at Live `Ukulele. Brad's mom shot some video which you can see below. The hickups in the video near the end are from my wife snapping some photos which froze up the video for a micro second.

The HSG group gets together each Friday evening and I hope to make it down for one of them in the near future.

Some of the board members from ‘Ukulele Underground. Left to right: dhkane, Dominator, Hippie Guy, FHS-72 (in front), Torao, and Kanaka916

Dominator and Hippie Guy

After recording the solo version of Piano Forte my good friend Jon Prown added a second track to it. The result is pretty amazing. As a duet the song takes on a completely different feel with hints of something similar to Canon in D. Jon and I have been wanting to collaborate on a recording for a number of years now and I'm glad we got the first one under our belts. I'm looking forward to recording more with him in the future.

While Piano Forte was still fresh in my mind I decided to record it to video as an entry into the "I Want More Jake" contest that is being held by "thejumpingflea" over at Ukulele Underground. Wish me luck as I would love to be the recipient of the autographed CD of Jake's new Live CD. Hope you enjoy the audio and video recordings.

Piano Forte Duet - MP3

Piano Forte - Video

Last weekend I maximized my musical intake by attendeding the 5th San Jose Ukulele Jam the day after my gig with the Classic Rock Band in Pleasanton. Heather, one of the members of Ukulele Underground,puts so much effort into these jam sessions making each one better than the one before.

One of the highlights was that she arranged for another well known lurker at Ukulele Underground, Deach, to fly in from the east coast just for the jam. It was a whirlwind trip for him and it was such a pleasure to finally meet him. Deach and Heather collaborated on a custom Fluke design for yet another Ukulele Underground member, Russbuss, and they surprised him with it during the middle of his set. It was an awesome day. Here are a couple videos from my set. I had the pleasure of having Alex back me up on the guitar for Gypsy Ukulele.

Crosscurrent

Gypsy Ukulele

My good friend Ke leo captured some footage from my set in Cerritos at the 7th Annual Southern California Ukulele Festival back in October. He was kind enough to do some editing and send a couple of the videos to me. Shirley T is from my solo set and Gypsy Ukulele is with Dominator & Friends, John Rockwell and Konabob. John is playing his Dominator soprano that I made for him a few years back.

GYPSY UKULELE

Me & Shirley T

A couple of my Youtube friends posted up videos of Thriller recently. This sparked my interest a bit so I thought I would tab it out and take a crack at it myself.

Tabs can be found on the TABS page via the link at the top.

To view the video in High Quality follow this link to youtube and select the High Quality version.

On my recent vacation the crew from Ukulele Underground (Aldrine Guerrero and Aaron (puremarkska) stopped by the condo at Lawai` Beach Resort on Poi Pu's south shore of Kauai to shoot some footage for some upcoming Uke Minutes episodes.

Episode 30 of the Uke Minutes serious of lessons is now up at Ukulele Underground. It covers the very basics of reading tab for the person who has never seen it before and has no idea how to use it to their advantage. Hopefully, we will be able to cover some more advanced topics relative to tablature in the future.

Uke Minutes Episode 30 - How to Read Tab